Giving Back to the Earth: The Significance of Pachamama Day

What does it mean to “discover” a place where people have lived for thousands of years? And who is protecting the sacred places and waters that are still here today? Robert Rosa is a Taíno leader and a member of the American Indian Movement who has spent years protecting Native burial sites and wild places across Florida. On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day, he takes us back to where the Taíno story begins: who they were, how they lived, how they traded all the way to Florida, and why so many words we use every day came from them. Then Robert explains why calling 1492 a “discovery” is so offensive, and corrects a myth about the Taíno that has been told for hundreds of years. Finally, we come home to Florida. Robert talks about his work using federal law to help the Seminole and Miccosukee protect burial sites from developers, and why Shingle Creek, the headwaters of the Everglades, matters for every person who drinks Florida’s water. This episode is for students, teachers, and anyone who wants the real story behind Columbus Day, and practical ways to protect the land where they live.

What happens when the first fresh fish your people have eaten for ten thousand years stops coming up the river? And what do you lose when an entire generation grows up never tasting it? Cindy Wagner has lived on the Annette Island Reserve in Metlakatla, Alaska for 56 years, the only Native reserve in the state and the only one in the world sitting entirely on an island. Her husband Louie is known as the hooligan man. She is the Grease Lady. Together they have spent their lives on the Unuk River, teaching children, grandchildren and now great grandchildren how to live off the land. In this episode, Cindy explains what the hooligan is and why people once called it the savior fish, lining up four blocks deep for eight hours to get a single bucket. She describes finding oil drums and pallets thirty miles up a river that only Canada sits above, watching two natural lakes fill with mine tailings until blood red water spills over the top with every rainfall, and losing the marbled blue glacier water where the best trout used to hold. She walks through what it takes to render pure hooligan grease, why the Unuk is the only river in Alaska closed to the very people whose inherent right it is to fish it, and what is coming next: a proposed tailings dam 780 feet tall, five thousand workers, fifty five years. This is for anyone who wants to understand what a mine upstream actually does to the people downstream, told by someone who has watched it happen for a lifetime. What You'll Discover:

What happens when a place your people have prayed at for a thousand years becomes a uranium mining site? And what can one voice actually do to stop it? Sumaya Quitugua, a young woman from the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico and Chamorro from Guam, grew up at the Sky City, in traditional adobe homes on top of a mesa, where her grandfather taught her that we don't own the land or the water. We protect them. In this episode, Sumaya breaks down the fight for Chaco Canyon, a place protected by President Theodore Roosevelt over a century ago and named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, now targeted for uranium mining right up against its borders. She explains what's really at stake, what mining does to land and water that can never be undone, and how a seven-day public comment window turned into a hundred and fifty days because people refused to stay silent. This is for anyone who's ever wondered whether speaking up actually changes anything, and anyone who wants to understand sacred land from the people who carry it.

Hey friends, it's been a while. Like many of you, we've been navigating a lot on the environmental and overall news front lately, so today I'm doing something a little different. I think back to those early days kayaking with friends here in Florida, searching rivers for trash. Some days we'd arrive and the water was pristine. We almost felt bad, like we had nothing to do. My mentor smiled and said, "just enjoy it, sometimes we need to remember why we do what we do." That's what this episode is. No interviews, no talking. Just the sounds of the living world. This nocturnal soundscape was recorded deep inside Kichwa tribal territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon by artist Rafael Diogo. Bats cutting through the dark, insects surging into something almost electric, a monkey rustling unseen branches, a distant howl, and underneath it all a stream threading through the night. A beautiful reminder of what we're working for.

Feeling overwhelmed by climate change and disconnected from nature? What if the solutions we need have been here all along, in the wisdom our ancestors knew, in the plants growing in our backyards? Laylalanai Gocobachi, a Pascua Yaqui woman and Unity Earth Ambassador, learned this from her grandfather who sent her into the Arizona desert with grocery bags to "shop" for dinner. He taught her the desert is like our pantry, and that Native people were the first scientists. Today, Laylalanai shows us how to bridge traditional wisdom and modern science. You'll learn how she combines climate data with elder observations about disappearing plants, and why the Earth is constantly speaking to us, through snakes climbing trees before floods, through plants receding, we just need to remember how to listen. This is for anyone who's felt like one person can't make a difference, anyone searching for hope in these challenging times. What You'll Discover: